


Child of Prophecy

by littlelamblittlelamb



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology, The Iliad - Homer, The Song of Achilles - Madeline Miller
Genre: A mixture of reading 'The Song of Achilles' and passages of the Iliad, Canonical Character Death, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-07
Updated: 2015-01-07
Packaged: 2018-03-06 11:28:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3132755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlelamblittlelamb/pseuds/littlelamblittlelamb
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>That morning he had prayed for two things; the Greek ships to remain afloat and untouched by the Trojans, and the safe return of his friend Patroclus. Only one was granted, and Achilles would give anything for it to be the other. Let them all burn – every man and every ship – and let him rise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Child of Prophecy

_He will be greater than his father._

_Should Achilles fight in Troy, he will die untimely but remembered. If he does not, he will live old and forgotten._

_Achilles cannot fall until the Trojan hero Hector is dead._

_The bravest of the Myrmidons will fall before him._

* * *

 

It’s as though his body has changed form and element; like once it flowed with warm, rich blood – the blood of kings, the blood of Gods – and now he is a child born of the jolting brine that slaps the ships’ hulks.

_Patroclus is dead._

He had seen the Prince Antilochus running in the distance. He had felt it even then; the softest hush of fear, a tide rolling in. He had simply watched the warrior – for warriors did become messengers when there was news on the battlefield – race across the earth, the smell of salt and the sea combing over him like his mother’s hands, grains of sand falling loose from his palms. The greatest warrior in Greece – _Aristos Achaean –_ wears no armour and spends his days in the camps and by the beach.

_Patroclus is_ dead.

Achilles looks up at the sweating man. There are tears on his cheeks; he is their friend. He had said the words in fragmented gasps, eyes wild, face glistening. Achilles doesn’t think to question how he looks as his mouth falls open and a dry breath threatens to drown him. He feels his mind stutter. Idiotic thoughts take flight – he’s not, he’s not, he _cannot_ be – but they are strangled in an instant as it washes over him. A moment of quiet – the tide draws back once more – and then the world bursts.

His cry is one to wake the gods. He reaches for a sword that isn’t there before falling to his knees. Achilles’s rage is infinite and deadly, and now he drowns in it. He screams and pulls at his own golden hair until it rips from his scalp. That morning he had prayed for two things; the Greek ships to remain afloat and untouched by the Trojans, and the safe return of his friend Patroclus. Only one was granted, and Achilles would give anything for it to be the other. Let them all burn – every man and every ship – and let _him_ rise.

He does not know how long he groans and weeps on his knees. It is not beautiful. The Prince Achilles who moves like the immortals chokes and rubs dirt into his golden skin that sweats beneath the heat of the Trojan sun and the weight of a world fallen atop him. When he finally emerges from his grief, a gasp of air as he treads water, he sees the crease in Antilochus’s brow. Patroclus’s body is elsewhere, and it occurs to him that it should not be. It should never have been.

Antilochus sighs and rubs his face. “They fight over his body.”

Achilles casts it aside. Patroclus has fallen because the best of the Greeks did not fight. Quiet, faithful Patroclus – his dearest – is dead because Achilles would not wear his armour and Patroclus would; in his armour, in his name, for his honour. He cannot bear it. He cannot accept sorrow and nostalgia, only vengeance. “Who is responsible?” he demands.

Antilochus’s eyes widen and his jaw clenches.

A drop less patience and Achilles would have grabbed Antilochus by the hair and swung him like a slave. “Who did it?” When he is once more met with no reply, Achilles feels his tongue grow heavy and his throat tingle.

Achilles is the son of a goddess and the good king her raped her on the beach. He knows prophecy. His mother tells him lines, spun from the words of the gods. Some men think they can defeat prophecy. When he could fit on her lap and knew nothing of his own rage or pride, she would tell him of such fools and he would laugh aloud. Achilles knows prophecy and fate, but before there was choice and now there is none.

“Hector,” he whispers.

He imagines a laugh coming to his lips, but it does not. Achilles’s death is the twin of Hector’s; he is alive indefinitely until Troy’s best is food for worms. Achilles came to Troy when he was seventeen; it will not be long now before he is thirty. More than a decade drifted by, men asking why Hector lives while Achilles can throw a spear farther than man can fling arrows. He joked that Hector was yet to offend him, that there was no need to kill him. The truth was that he valued his life more than the Greeks who would die because Hector lives when he could have been slain a hundred times over.

Somewhere in the depths of Achilles’s mind, he is aware that there should be decision here, but he is not swayed. Before he swam its shores; now he hurtles towards his fate having finally found the current. There is thought to be had, but it does not feel so. Achilles does not feel so.

Antilochus nods.

“Hector is dead,” he declares. He will not fight it any longer. He forgets the men. He forgets Agamemnon, his general, the man who wields him like a spear and honours him like a stick. All he sees is Hector, who should not breathe for what he has done.

“They say the Gods were there – that they planned it all. It was not natural.” Antilochus speaks, but he is resigned.

Achilles does not react. He knows of gods and he knows of men, and he would have them all at the end of a sword for this. Finally, “Tell them all to cheer. I shall fight for them once more.”

Anitilochus shakes his head. “Your armour is on Patroclus, if not Hector.”

Achilles feels for the something akin to control. He finds his capacity for blood thirst and he grasps at it like a dying man. “Aristos Achaean does not need armour to frighten Trojans.”

And he does not. The Trojans allow them his naked body covered in gore that lies still at strange angles. Achilles weeps over it, and promises the shell of the bravest Myrmidon the heads of twelve noble Trojans and the tears of slave girls and a hecatomb in his honour. He cradles the head of Patroclus but tells them all: Patroclus will not be buried until Hector is dead.

It is not so long to wait.


End file.
